Nothing Ever Ends Poetically
by The Knife In Your Side
Summary: The slow eroding of your heart was as insidious as any cancer. All of a sudden you forgot how to be a sister, a daughter, a lover. You forgot youth and joy and love. All of a sudden you needed music louder than your thoughts, and words stronger than your emptiness. You needed a rope, a razor, a whole bottle of pills.


_"Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was just red."_

— _Kait Rokowski_

* * *

><p>The slow eroding of your heart was as insidious as any cancer.<p>

But the true tragedy of it was how you didn't even notice you were decaying until your defences wore away and the sadness trickled slowly, slowly into your chest. All of a sudden you forgot how to be a sister, a daughter, a lover. You forgot youth and joy and love.

All of a sudden you needed music louder than your thoughts, and words stronger than your emptiness. You needed a rope, a razor, a whole bottle of pills.

And you found them, oh in that darkness, did you find them.

* * *

><p>At age seven you woke in the night to find the bed of your parents empty.<p>

But there was a yellow light on in the kitchen, so you took a peek through the crack of the doorway to find your mother sitting at the kitchen bench in her underwear. The sticky Texan heat was sweltering as you've never been able to afford proper cooling so all the windows of your small suburban house were swung open, thin curtains wafting like ghosts in the breeze that danced its wisping way through your ramshackle home.

Her head was hung, wrist clutching limply to a bottle. _God, why is it always a bottle?_

She's sobbing and you're watching. Your mother, who all your school friends adored because she didn't set a bed time, who was always singing and dancing and cracking jokes, a women known for being young and pretty and a little bit silly.

You didn't understand the faults in such traits back then.

It was the first time you noticed her scars and stretchmarks; the ugly pink birthmark on her hip; a tattoo you couldn't read printed bellow her left breast and down the rudders of her ribs. You guessed they were probably lyrics to one of the Johnny Cash songs she loved to listen to whenever your father left for a few days (you didn't understand that either).

But you do hear the flywire door open with a tired screeching sound.

"Rox, what're you doing up so late?" the timid voice of your father asked quietly as he moved into the kitchen.

"Dirky – _hic_ – why can't you sleep in _our_ bed?"

He was silent, expression unsure on how to reply as she stood, striding towards him. Roxy leaned into his chest with a sigh, fingers fiddling with the edges of his shirts collar. He remained stiff and stagnant, hands firm at his sides.

Suddenly you felt unsure on whether you should still be standing there undeclared.

"I can smell him on you," she whispered.

"I'm sorry."

Your mother shoved him away, "Fuck you, Strider."

The sudden sobriety in her voice startled you.

"_I'm sorry."_

Your mother's eyes flared, "God, is that all you know how to say? Because I don't think you know what it means!" she paused, waiting for a reply – wanting for him to _say something_, but he remained quiet. "_Fuck you_, you – you _fucking sociopath_. Do you ever _care_ about this family? About _me_?"

Roxy's eyes were tearing up, "Why can't you love me?" she asked innocently, voice weak and wavering.

The question hung in the air and you feel something inside you twist painfully.

"I'm sor–"

"No. No you're not."

When you return to bed, you still couldn't sleep. It was as if a fine fissure opened within you, revealing the first crack across your heart.

In the morning, you couldn't properly remember what you'd heard. But you remember your mother's voice. It still rings in your ears.

From that moment on, your lacuna only grew.

* * *

><p>At age nine Jake begins coming over and everybody pretends that things are fine. But you're now old enough to notice the bitterness in your mothers laugh, the tremor in her hand, the heartbreak in her eyes – still you say nothing, not wishing to be the one to shatter the fragile illusion of ease and joy worn like porcelain masquerade masks by everybody at the table.<p>

However, you didn't manage to see everything. In your eyes, Jake was still simply your father's _friend_.

You recall it was on Thanksgiving you first met him – and as a shy child, you barely uttered a word in greeting as he beamed down at you, holding out a hand to shake.

And you watched him in utter confusion, wondering how he could smile with such ease. Where he found his jokes, and his kindness. Why his brilliant green eyes were so much lighter than your fathers, but they still always managed to linger on him.

And most prominently you wonder why, despite his gentleness, your mother still could never meet his weightless gaze.

Aside from the guest, the night unfolded the way it usually did. They feasted upon store-bought roast chicken and potato salad. Your brother inhaled his food, added sarcastic commentary into the adult's conversation, and returned to his room halfway through the night without a single thanks given. Your mother grew progressively drunk, slurring her words and reaching for you to sit on her lap when she grew mopey. Your father seemed the same – stoic, passive, unobtrusive – but there was something else there. Lingering touches and gazes, hands held discreetly beneath the table where you couldn't see. The subtle, quiet comfort of Jake sitting by his side.

All things that filtered out of your comprehension.

But as Roxy dozed at the kitchen counter, you found Dave standing by the front window staring unremarkably out into the front garden where you had assumed Dirk was saying goodbye to his friend.

Peeking out from behind your brother and into the dark, you let out a slight gasp at what you find: the two men holding each other's hands, your father's head rested on Jake's shoulder tiredly. There's a comforting intimacy around them, and you suddenly feel intrusive to the hushed moment.

You and Dave both stand by the window invisible to the two captors of your attention as Jake presses a light kiss to your father's forehead and reluctantly turns to his beat-up station wagon.

Your father stands in the garden, watching silently as the other man drives away, and you flinch as you see him pick up an idle brick laying in the overgrown grass, throwing it at the fence with teeth gritted and fists balled in frustration.

"You think dad loves him?" you ask your brother softly.

"I think dad's a fag." Dave murmurs half-heartedly before turning away to scuttle back down the hall and into his bedroom.

* * *

><p>At age eleven, you're mother begun attending Alcoholics Anonymous and your naïve little heart fluttered with pride. You recall waving to her from the car as Dirk grimly dropped her off outside the clinic. You remember when you're brother Dave told you <em>it wouldn't last<em> in his cynical monotone voice. You reminisce upon punching him in the arm.

But a few weeks later you found her in the bathtub, whisky in one hand, cigarette in the other. And although you understood she wasn't a bad person for the ways she tried to kill her sadness, it was the first time you truly realized she was a bad mother.

"I sorry darlin'," she whispered in a drawl, trembling, reaching a hand out for you to hold. But you never really did believed her. After that day, you never really believed anything she told you ever again.

Still you took her damp palms in yours, swallowing that childish rage burning on the tip of your tongue and muttered in reply, "I know you are, ma. I know."

It's an honest lie, one Roxy needed to hear, but the words still sink sick and heavy like poisoned stones in your knotted stomach.

At age thirteen Dirk finally leaves. You saw it coming, but it still felt like a betrayal. It hurt in a raw, aching way that weighed heavy in your diaphragm and made you wince with every breath.

You chased after your mother as she stumbled desperately into the dimly lit street still damp from the early-morning rain. Knees scrapped from kneeling on the asphalt road, voice hoarse from futile screaming – begging to the back of that old station wagon as it disappeared down the court.

She threw her empty bottle and it smashed out Jake's tail-light and oh God, you'll never forget the way she looked in the moment, those empty eyes only a few shades lighter than yours. They were kaleidoscopic as the sunrise illuminating the street, refracting against all her shattered pieces. You remember this moment because it was the first time you realized you didn't really have a mother, you had a women too splintered to recognise the way your neighbours peeped through their windows to watch the dreadful scene unfold.

But you managed to coax what was left of her inside as she moaned hazily, _"I can change, baby, I can change."_

Leant against a pillar on the steps of the front porch was your brother laughing under his breath. You send a glare, but he simply shrugs, "What, she'd gonna _change_? Like we haven't heard _that_ one before – plus, the only change Dirk would come back for is a sex–"

"What is wrong with you?" you interrupt indignantly, willing with all you might not to let tears spill.

Dave smirked, cocking his head to the side, "I should ask the same. All you do is try to hold this family together – and you know what? It's gonna fuckin' _break you_, Rosie. You're gonna crack under the pressure of her bullshit one day. You're gonna drive yourself mad trying to fix things that were born broken."

You don't reply, shuffling your mess of a mother into the house.

You swear you heard him laugh.

* * *

><p>At age fifteen you memorise the chemical formula for love: C8H11NO2 + C10H12N2O + C43H66N12O12S2. Dopamine. Serotonin. Oxytocin. You scrawled it up your arms with black marker and carved it into the desks at school, daydreaming about injecting it straight into your veins.<p>

Little did you know Dave's life revelled around the same basic concept, but instead of simple fantasizing, he'd taken the leap you never could. Dave had always been the brave twin. Where you were the capricious calm, he was the steadfast storm. Born unafraid and unapologetic, much ike his mother, completely willing to destroy himself if it meant he could forget existence for a few blissful moments.

The day you walked into his room and discovered him sitting on his bed, teeth pulling tight the elastic wrapped around his upper arm, syringe in the other hand… all you could do was simply stand there in shock. You stared each other down for a moment; shaken and confused, with eyes boring into the obdurate shades of Dave who wore the same apathetic mask as always, patiently waiting for you to leave so he could stick himself and escape from the four walls that loomed around him.

"_What–"_

"Out." His voice was low and menacing.

"_Dave–_"

"Just get out."

And you did, absconding to the bathroom and locking the door behind you. Pressed against the door, a hand clasped over your mouth in utter disbelief, you feel your reflection in the murky mirror staring back at you with a mocking gaze. So standing you clutched the sink until your knuckles turned white and begin to furiously scrub away the black ink scrawled across your body until nothing but patches of raw, red skin remain, burning into you a grim reminder: there's always something left to loose.

You never spoke about what'd transpired that afternoon.

You never entered Dave's room again.

* * *

><p>At age seventeen you've found your own addiction.<p>

Her name was Kanaya and it was lovely, and her voice as lovely, and _oh_ she was lovely. Slender, creamy skinned and warm to the touch; eyes brimming with a kindness you'd never known before.

And recklessly one evening you wondered, _maybe I can stay_.

But that night she leant down and whispered to you everything she found beautiful and you were at the top of the list. God, you thought you were going to be sick. Because you'd never known those words could be told truthfully – you still don't.

You just didn't understand back then. You'd have so many glass shards stabbed into you that when somebody finally handed you a flower you assumed it to be poisonous.

So when she finally fell into slumber you untangled yourself from her grasp, her sheets, her love and disappeared out the back flywire door, bare feet crossing the stones in her backyard past all the roses in her night garden.

And you swore you'd never lose yourself in a girl like that again, but alone in your bed you wrapped yourself in her old sweater and wished upon the old glowing stars stuck on your ceiling that she'd grace your dreams, just once before you properly let her go. But she didn't, and you never forgot what it felt like to have her weight draped across your chest, her silken voice moaning your name, her touch ghosting across you skin.

_Leaving was necessary_, you thought deftly.

And you're so good at lying to yourself by now that you believe it.

* * *

><p>At age nineteen, you wake up before dawn every morning, cursing the fact you're not dead yet. Pondering the ways in which you could incite it. Feeling as if you possibly were already, like you were simply haunting your old splintered bones without noticing. Somehow still torn between the burning desire to destroy yourself, and the utter reality that you simply couldn't.<p>

You've spent so much of your life caught in the inbetween. Restless, barely at home within yourself let alone the heartbreak-soaked walls of your dingy little suburban house. Standing in the doorway watching silently as everybody begun to break down around you. Watching as each member of your family systematically destroyed themselves, and whether it was your father's denial, your mother's drink or your brother's drugs, you picked them up each time. God, they were all so _selfish_. You think, maybe it's your turn.

Why was it always _you_ who collected the bottles behind them, who held hair back as they vomited into the toilet, who stayed awake all night to make sure they didn't slip in a coma while they slept? Who worked two jobs while keeping up your grades? Who rationed the food stamps and paid the bills? Why did _you_ have to be the one constantly in control, while _they_ sadistically devastated themselves to the point of inhumanity?

Honestly, you were just so _tired_. Sometimes you didn't even feel solid. It was as if you were hollow, simply the paper-thin shell of a person. Like dust waiting for a breeze to steal you away.

But the crushing weight of responsibility still pinned you down, reminding you with cracked ribs and purple bruises of your own bitterly brittle existence.

Still, you doubt anybody would notice fresh scars on your pale skin. You doubt anybody would notice if a whole bottle of sleeping pills was stolen from the cabinet above the kitchen sink. You doubt anyone would notice if you dragged a whole coil of dirty rope from the backyard, through the house and into your bedroom. You doubt anybody would notice if you disappeared for good this time.

So why not. Why the fuck not.


End file.
